Hello bflatnine,
many thanks for your comments.
Yes, you are quite right, I have come to the conclusion that competency in vernacular Mandarin is a sine qua non to being able to access the vast majority of the scholarship on the things I'm actually interested in--classical literature, calligraphy, ancient philosophies and so on. All the English stuff is very watered-down.
I'll investigate Chiang Yee's book.
I have looked into calligraphy so far as the language barrier will take me. And it's *insert expletive* difficult. And yet it looks so easy and natural! And that's just getting 楷書 to look half-decent with a brush. But I take your point that no 'traditional stroke order' has never been set in stone (unlike all the great calligraphers).
I've had 'Introduction to Chinese Cursive Script' on my amazon wishlist for a long time, but haven't got around to buying it yet. There is, so far as I've seen, nothing whatsoever about 篆書 in English; certainly not regarding stroke order.
And yes, you are, I think, alas, right that being a 'foreigner' makes me 'wrong' if I do anything which any particular Chinese person doing the judging doesn't do. But my object here isn't to impress the Chinese; it is solely for my own intellectual satisfaction.
many thanks for your comments.
Yes, you are quite right, I have come to the conclusion that competency in vernacular Mandarin is a sine qua non to being able to access the vast majority of the scholarship on the things I'm actually interested in--classical literature, calligraphy, ancient philosophies and so on. All the English stuff is very watered-down.
I'll investigate Chiang Yee's book.
I have looked into calligraphy so far as the language barrier will take me. And it's *insert expletive* difficult. And yet it looks so easy and natural! And that's just getting 楷書 to look half-decent with a brush. But I take your point that no 'traditional stroke order' has never been set in stone (unlike all the great calligraphers).
I've had 'Introduction to Chinese Cursive Script' on my amazon wishlist for a long time, but haven't got around to buying it yet. There is, so far as I've seen, nothing whatsoever about 篆書 in English; certainly not regarding stroke order.
And yes, you are, I think, alas, right that being a 'foreigner' makes me 'wrong' if I do anything which any particular Chinese person doing the judging doesn't do. But my object here isn't to impress the Chinese; it is solely for my own intellectual satisfaction.